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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 12, 2009
President George Bush, the lame duck who languished outside of the news spotlight--what he called the "klieg lights"--for most of 2008, elbowed his way back to the top of the network news agenda with his farewell press conference at the White House to kick off the week. His reflections on the disappointments of his tenure, his disdain for self-pity and the burdens of office were played extensively as the lead item on all three newscasts. The thoughts of soon-to-be-former President Bush were Story of the Day.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JANUARY 12, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
THE THOUGHTS OF PRESIDENT BUSH President George Bush, the lame duck who languished outside of the news spotlight--what he called the "klieg lights"--for most of 2008, elbowed his way back to the top of the network news agenda with his farewell press conference at the White House to kick off the week. His reflections on the disappointments of his tenure, his disdain for self-pity and the burdens of office were played extensively as the lead item on all three newscasts. The thoughts of soon-to-be-former President Bush were Story of the Day.
NBC had White House correspondent Chuck Todd narrate Bush's soundbites in a traditional news package format. He called the comments "vintage Bush--all that was missing was a rendition of the song My Way." ABC decided not to use a correspondent. Instead anchor Charles Gibson strung together a series of comments and then turned to This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos who observed that he saw "every single side of George Bush but it was all at the same time." CBS anchor Katie Couric consulted her network's in-house political analyst Dan Bartlett, who used to work as Bush's top flack, who "liked what I saw today" observing "a wide range of emotions and reflection and a lot of that steadfastness." CBS' White House correspondent Jim Axelrod found Bush "as introspective as I have ever seen him."
A trio of Bush's comments were picked up by all three newscasts. The first was when Bush mimicked a pretend President's whining about the burdens of office: "Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch. It is just pathetic, isn't it, self-pity?" The President did not elaborate on the identity of the imaginary Oval Office inhabitant whose complaints he was ridiculing.
Bush explained the reason for his decision not to inspect the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina immediately the floods happened: he wanted to avoid being criticized by the White House press corps. His arrival would have diverted the attention of local police officers, he explained, "and then your questions, I suspect, would have been: 'How could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge?'" NBC's Todd corrected the President when he claimed the Homeland Security helicopters had rescued 30,000 from the floods: "The actual number of rooftop rescues was much lower."
As for negatives, Bush singled out his Mission Accomplished banner and the abu-Ghraib prisoner-abuse photographs as Iraqi "disappointments." All three newscasts aired Bush's admission that "not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment," implying that he would have preferred it if Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been armed to the teeth after all. He cannot have meant that.
Bush confessed that sometimes he found himself "riding mountain bikes as hard as you possible can trying to forget for the moment" the burdens of office. As a former President he will not find himself with "the big straw hat and Hawaiian shirt sitting on some beach." Why not? "Particularly since I quit drinking."
NBC’S WHITE HOUSE DOUBLE TEAM NBC has long specialized on his-and-hers White House correspondent teams. Now its duo is Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie. Before that there was David Gregory and Campbell Brown. Their predecessors were David Bloom and Claire Shipman. The double team worked effectively on this news day, as Guthrie followed up Todd's report with a substantive story: George Bush's formal application, at the request of President-elect Barack Obama, for Congress to approve the second $350bn tranche to fund the Treasury Department's TARP bailout of the financial industry.
Guthrie reported on Obama's promise that the second spending package would go to "small businesses and community banks and foreclosure relief." The first $350bn "went mostly to big Wall Street banks with little government tracking of how they spent it." On CBS' Follow the Money report, Sharyl Attkisson claimed that it had been the Treasury Department's official policy--"largely under the public radar with only anonymous government officials acknowledging the strategy"--to use TARP to subsidize bank takeovers and buyouts rather than to provide mortgage relief or to free up consumer credit. She played a soundbite from a conference call by BB&T Bank a month before it received $3bn from TARP: "This is a relatively inexpensive way to raise capital for acquisitions."
SUBSIDIZE ALL HOMEBUYERS ABC launched a weeklong series entitled What's the Fix? that will tick off each of the failing sectors of the American economy and examine proposed policy remedies. David Muir started with the burst bubble of the housing market in Phoenix. The Treasury Department is debating a plan to rewrite every homebuyer's mortgage--those falling behind on their payments and those who have no problem with their monthly bills--to switch to a 4.5% rate of interest. The total cost of such a nationwide subsidy: $150bn. "Even the homeowners who have done everything right are now paying a price."
QUIETER, MORE SUBDUED CARS The Detroit International Automobile Show got under way. CBS and NBC both assigned a correspondent. CBS' Anthony Mason found "a distinctly more austere" mood as annual vehicle sales amounted to 13m in 2008--down from 17m in 2000--and heading for 11m in 2009. "Much quieter, much more subdued," agreed CNBC's Phil LeBeau on NBC, envisioning the "green wave automakers are hoping to ride back to profitability." The show is offering hybrids and electric-powered models for the future, even though in 2008 they represented fewer than 3% of total sales.
MADOFF’S FAMOUS HOUSEHOLD Bernard Madoff is becoming quite the household name. All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to cover the attempt by federal prosecutors to send the disgraced financier to jail. Madoff is suspected of running his $50bn investment fund as a Ponzi scheme but he has not yet been indicted, CNBC's Trish Regan pointed out on NBC, let alone convicted of anything. Prosecutors objected to Madoff's apparent attempts to mail valuables to his relatives but "the government did not demonstrate either a serious risk of flight or obstruction of justice," as CBS' Randall Pinkston reported the court's finding, so, under house arrest and on $10m bail, back to his luxury Manhattan apartment he went. It is filled, so ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi (embargoed link) assured us, "with millions of dollars in artwork, jewelry and priceless vintage watches."
SLUMS OF MUMBAI & GAZA A pair of Third World slums made news, one depressing, the other exhilarating. The slums of Mumbai became newsworthy after Hollywood honored Slumdog Millionaire, the movie shot there using "actual Mumbai street kids," as NBC's George Lewis pointed out. Lewis happened to cover the movie's exhilarating success after his own network aired the Gold Globe Awards, where Slumdog was honored. CBS was the only network to assign a reporter to the continuing fighting in the Gaza Strip as the death toll now exceeds a depressing 900. "The Israeli war cabinet is reportedly split on whether the push further into Gaza's urban areas and cause more civilian casualties--or declare victory and stop," reported Mark Phillips.
THE OBAMA COUNTDOWN BEGINS As Inauguration Day approaches, we can expect more and more closing Obamafeatures. CBS unveiled its Road to the Inauguration series with Michelle Miller's profile of 330 of the incoming President's invitees: the surviving members of World War II's Tuskegee Airmen, racial trailblazers who pledged to "watch your back" to the next Commander in Chief. ABC opted for an altogether more jocular tone following Barack Obama's revelation to George Stephanopoulos on This Week that the shortlist for the next First Dog has been narrowed to a labradoodle or a Portuguese water dog. John Berman searched out a pair of celebrity champions for each breed and persuaded them to insult one another on behalf of their pets. They were Henry The Fonz Winkler and Edward The Lion of the Senate Kennedy. Kennedy dismissed labradoodles as "water dog wannabes." Winkler defended his hound: "Having the dog in the house actually cures the common cold."
NBC had White House correspondent Chuck Todd narrate Bush's soundbites in a traditional news package format. He called the comments "vintage Bush--all that was missing was a rendition of the song My Way." ABC decided not to use a correspondent. Instead anchor Charles Gibson strung together a series of comments and then turned to This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos who observed that he saw "every single side of George Bush but it was all at the same time." CBS anchor Katie Couric consulted her network's in-house political analyst Dan Bartlett, who used to work as Bush's top flack, who "liked what I saw today" observing "a wide range of emotions and reflection and a lot of that steadfastness." CBS' White House correspondent Jim Axelrod found Bush "as introspective as I have ever seen him."
A trio of Bush's comments were picked up by all three newscasts. The first was when Bush mimicked a pretend President's whining about the burdens of office: "Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch. It is just pathetic, isn't it, self-pity?" The President did not elaborate on the identity of the imaginary Oval Office inhabitant whose complaints he was ridiculing.
Bush explained the reason for his decision not to inspect the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina immediately the floods happened: he wanted to avoid being criticized by the White House press corps. His arrival would have diverted the attention of local police officers, he explained, "and then your questions, I suspect, would have been: 'How could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge?'" NBC's Todd corrected the President when he claimed the Homeland Security helicopters had rescued 30,000 from the floods: "The actual number of rooftop rescues was much lower."
As for negatives, Bush singled out his Mission Accomplished banner and the abu-Ghraib prisoner-abuse photographs as Iraqi "disappointments." All three newscasts aired Bush's admission that "not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment," implying that he would have preferred it if Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been armed to the teeth after all. He cannot have meant that.
Bush confessed that sometimes he found himself "riding mountain bikes as hard as you possible can trying to forget for the moment" the burdens of office. As a former President he will not find himself with "the big straw hat and Hawaiian shirt sitting on some beach." Why not? "Particularly since I quit drinking."
NBC’S WHITE HOUSE DOUBLE TEAM NBC has long specialized on his-and-hers White House correspondent teams. Now its duo is Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie. Before that there was David Gregory and Campbell Brown. Their predecessors were David Bloom and Claire Shipman. The double team worked effectively on this news day, as Guthrie followed up Todd's report with a substantive story: George Bush's formal application, at the request of President-elect Barack Obama, for Congress to approve the second $350bn tranche to fund the Treasury Department's TARP bailout of the financial industry.
Guthrie reported on Obama's promise that the second spending package would go to "small businesses and community banks and foreclosure relief." The first $350bn "went mostly to big Wall Street banks with little government tracking of how they spent it." On CBS' Follow the Money report, Sharyl Attkisson claimed that it had been the Treasury Department's official policy--"largely under the public radar with only anonymous government officials acknowledging the strategy"--to use TARP to subsidize bank takeovers and buyouts rather than to provide mortgage relief or to free up consumer credit. She played a soundbite from a conference call by BB&T Bank a month before it received $3bn from TARP: "This is a relatively inexpensive way to raise capital for acquisitions."
SUBSIDIZE ALL HOMEBUYERS ABC launched a weeklong series entitled What's the Fix? that will tick off each of the failing sectors of the American economy and examine proposed policy remedies. David Muir started with the burst bubble of the housing market in Phoenix. The Treasury Department is debating a plan to rewrite every homebuyer's mortgage--those falling behind on their payments and those who have no problem with their monthly bills--to switch to a 4.5% rate of interest. The total cost of such a nationwide subsidy: $150bn. "Even the homeowners who have done everything right are now paying a price."
QUIETER, MORE SUBDUED CARS The Detroit International Automobile Show got under way. CBS and NBC both assigned a correspondent. CBS' Anthony Mason found "a distinctly more austere" mood as annual vehicle sales amounted to 13m in 2008--down from 17m in 2000--and heading for 11m in 2009. "Much quieter, much more subdued," agreed CNBC's Phil LeBeau on NBC, envisioning the "green wave automakers are hoping to ride back to profitability." The show is offering hybrids and electric-powered models for the future, even though in 2008 they represented fewer than 3% of total sales.
MADOFF’S FAMOUS HOUSEHOLD Bernard Madoff is becoming quite the household name. All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to cover the attempt by federal prosecutors to send the disgraced financier to jail. Madoff is suspected of running his $50bn investment fund as a Ponzi scheme but he has not yet been indicted, CNBC's Trish Regan pointed out on NBC, let alone convicted of anything. Prosecutors objected to Madoff's apparent attempts to mail valuables to his relatives but "the government did not demonstrate either a serious risk of flight or obstruction of justice," as CBS' Randall Pinkston reported the court's finding, so, under house arrest and on $10m bail, back to his luxury Manhattan apartment he went. It is filled, so ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi (embargoed link) assured us, "with millions of dollars in artwork, jewelry and priceless vintage watches."
SLUMS OF MUMBAI & GAZA A pair of Third World slums made news, one depressing, the other exhilarating. The slums of Mumbai became newsworthy after Hollywood honored Slumdog Millionaire, the movie shot there using "actual Mumbai street kids," as NBC's George Lewis pointed out. Lewis happened to cover the movie's exhilarating success after his own network aired the Gold Globe Awards, where Slumdog was honored. CBS was the only network to assign a reporter to the continuing fighting in the Gaza Strip as the death toll now exceeds a depressing 900. "The Israeli war cabinet is reportedly split on whether the push further into Gaza's urban areas and cause more civilian casualties--or declare victory and stop," reported Mark Phillips.
THE OBAMA COUNTDOWN BEGINS As Inauguration Day approaches, we can expect more and more closing Obamafeatures. CBS unveiled its Road to the Inauguration series with Michelle Miller's profile of 330 of the incoming President's invitees: the surviving members of World War II's Tuskegee Airmen, racial trailblazers who pledged to "watch your back" to the next Commander in Chief. ABC opted for an altogether more jocular tone following Barack Obama's revelation to George Stephanopoulos on This Week that the shortlist for the next First Dog has been narrowed to a labradoodle or a Portuguese water dog. John Berman searched out a pair of celebrity champions for each breed and persuaded them to insult one another on behalf of their pets. They were Henry The Fonz Winkler and Edward The Lion of the Senate Kennedy. Kennedy dismissed labradoodles as "water dog wannabes." Winkler defended his hound: "Having the dog in the house actually cures the common cold."
